Wisp of a Thing

17

Vanover got to his feet, and although the music inside the barn didn’t stop, several big, grim-faced men emerged as if they’d somehow heard Rockhouse arrive. They lined up on either side of Vanover.

“Well, butter my ass and call me a biscuit,” Rockhouse said. His hair was disheveled, and spittle hung in his beard. If he was intimidated, it didn’t show. “Y’all got quite a shindig going here.”

“Just turn around and go back the way you came, Mr. Hicks,” Vanover said. “None of us want any trouble.”

“Hell, me neither, boys.” Rockhouse closed the station wagon’s door. A couple of the men jumped at the sound. Rob couldn’t figure out why this old man made these big, strong farmers so tense, but they all looked like they expected violence to erupt at any moment. “I’m just here to fetch my nephew home before he gets into any trouble. I told him not to come up here, but he’s got a new city girlfriend and wants to show her off.”

Without taking his eyes off Rockhouse, Vanover said, “Jim, go fetch Stoney Hicks. I saw him polecattin’ around inside earlier.” One of the big men nodded and went inside.

Bliss grabbed Rob’s arm and pulled him into the shadows near the edge of the forest. “I thought you said Rockhouse never came here,” he whispered.

“He never has before,” Bliss said, her voice tight. Of all the times to be saddled with a non-Tufa. “Something’s up. Just stay here and be quiet, okay? This doesn’t concern you.”

Bliss strode out of the darkness and stood in front of Vanover, facing Hicks. The beefy hill men looked visibly relieved when they saw her. Rockhouse belched a little, then squinted at her. “That you, Bliss?”

“You know it is, Rockhouse,” she said, folding her arms.

Her presence took away a bit of his bluster, and he stood quietly until the side door opened and Jim led two people out. One was the tall, handsome young man Rob had noticed earlier. He held the hand of the girl behind him, and when the light struck her face, Rob saw that it was indeed Stella Kizer.

Before he even consciously realized it, he stalked out of the shadows. “Hey!” he yelled. “Stella Kizer!”

She turned toward his voice. Her face looked pale and splotchy, as if she’d been crying. She seemed to recognize Rob, and opened her mouth to speak.

Before she could, Stoney said simply, “C’mon, Stel.” She lowered her eyes and turned away.

“Hey,” Rob said as he reached the group, “I’m a friend of the lady’s husband, and I’d like a word with her.”

Bliss grabbed him by the arm. “Stay out of this!” she hissed.

He twisted out of her grasp. “Her husband’s worried sick about her, and the cops are looking all over for her. I figure the least she could do is tell me what the hell she thinks she’s doing so I can pass it on to them.”

Stella looked stricken, torn between obeying her new paramour and talking to Rob. Stoney opened the back passenger door.

“So what’s the deal, Stella?” Rob demanded. As he waited for her reply, he spotted several familiar rolled pieces of paper on the vehicle’s floorboard. So she had the rubbings.

“Y’all best back off,” Stoney said, his voice thick with alcohol and arrogance.

“I got no quarrel with you, friend, I just want to hear what the lady has to say for herself,” Rob said.

Stoney stepped in front of Stella, his broad chest belligerently pushed out. Rob looked up into the handsome face’s dull, almost lifeless eyes. “I ain’t your friend, city boy. I’m about to sing your dyin’ dirge.”

“Stoney!” Rockhouse barked warningly.

A line from one of the tombstones behind the fire station jumped unbidden to the front of Rob’s thoughts, and he fired back, “Yeah, well, I may just leave your body lifeless for the flies, pretty boy.”

The onlookers gasped. The music inside the barn stopped dead. The only sounds were insects in the woods and a distant airplane far overhead.

“See what you done?” Rockhouse said to his nephew, his voice high with outrage. “Now, get in the goddam car, Stoney. Now.”

Stoney held Rob’s gaze. “This ain’t over, short stuff,” Stoney said, then followed Stella into the car. Rob thought he caught a last, pleading look from her as the door closed, but before he could respond, the station wagon was already driving away in a cloud of dust turned hellfire red by its taillights.

The music picked up as if it had never stopped. Rob turned to Bliss. “They had her husband’s tombstone rubbings in—”

She took his hand and yanked him away from Vanover and the other men, all of whom stared at him as if he’d grown a second nose. When she had him back in the shadows out of earshot, she grabbed him by the throat. He was astounded at her strength.

“If you ever do anything like that again, Rob, I swear to God, I’ll kill you,” she roared, although her voice was barely a whisper. “I’m not exaggerating for effect, I mean it. I’ll physically kill you, and no one will ever find your body.”

“You people take your epitaphs mighty seriously,” he croaked, trying to get free of her grip. Maybe this was why she frightened Tiffany Gwinn.

“You just presumed to be something you most definitely are not. You represented yourself as something you can’t possibly be.” She yanked him close. “And your mouth wrote a check that I guarantee your ass can’t cash. And that makes it my problem.”

She released him and stepped away. He took a moment to catch his breath, and wondered if she’d done any permanent damage to his voice. “Okay, that was seriously messed up,” he gasped. “Here’s a hint—if something’s supposed to be secret, you shouldn’t carve it on your damn tombstones.”

“What the hell do you know about it?” she snapped. Calm down, Bliss, she told herself, you don’t have the luxury of a temper.

“You threatened to kill me,” he said.

“No, I promised to kill you. I’m sorry about that. Just give me a minute, all right?” She turned her back and lowered her head. She’d completely blown everything, thanks to Rockhouse’s unexpected appearance. Rob had seen the truth, but she’d had no time to explain it, to tell him what words and songs and stories really meant to her people, and why the wrong thing quoted at the wrong time could do irreparable harm.

He started to reply, but didn’t. Despite the attack and her demonstration of an almost super-human strength, he was moved by the way she suddenly seemed small and fragile. He started to reach for her, when movement in the corner of his eye stopped him.

Curnen peered around a tree at the very edge of the forest. It was the first time he’d seen her standing fully upright. She wore a different tattered dress, this one a couple of sizes too big that fell off one shoulder, and her hair was haphazardly brushed back from her face. It was both comical and touching, as if she’d wanted to dress up and look nice but literally had no idea how.

She put her finger to her lips, then nodded that he should come closer. Bliss, still turned away, did not notice. Curnen repeated the gesture, and playfully smiled. She stretched one six-fingered hand toward him, tentative and shy, and he couldn’t help himself. He reached toward her.

Her long, supple fingers closed around his hand, and she yanked him after her into the woods.

Bliss whirled. Rob had vanished, and only the vibration of the tree branches showed evidence of his passage. She caught a whiff of Curnen’s distinctive odor. No doubt she’d appeared demure, and helpless, and like a lost little girl to him. And now he was gone.

The images from that first dream before she’d met Rob sprang unbidden to her mind: a white hand clawing out of a grave, and the two figures fighting, one in a blood-spattered dress. She felt a chill, and heard the wind rustle the trees far above. The bonfire flared, and the conversation outside the barn died down. Even the music paused. When the night wind spoke, the Tufa listened, but only a few could hear it clearly. She was one of them.

Bliss bit her lip, clenched her fists, and plunged into the forest after her sister and Rob. For a Tufa, the woods were as vast as the seas, and she was looking for a lone man adrift in them. But she had to try. At least she had a pretty good idea where they’d gone.

Curnen’s grip was as powerful as her sister’s, and Rob barely kept his feet under him as she pulled him through the dark forest. He deflected branches from his face with his free hand and yelled, “Hey, stop! Hey!” His mind flashed to the song Rockhouse had sung on the post office porch: Young women they’ll run / Like hares on the mountain.

Then they burst into the open and her hand slipped away. He almost fell from the loss of momentum.

They’d reached a wide clearing. He looked back, but saw no sign of their passage through the forest.

The air around him felt warmer than at the barn. A stream trickled through the nearby woods, and he heard a glorious chorus of frogs. Above him, the full moon shone down so brightly, it was like silver-tinted daylight. Fireflies drifted through the air, hot gold against cool moonlight.

Curnen watched him silently from the far side of the open space. She swayed on her bare feet, with the same motion as her sister when she sang. Rob got a little nervous, wondering why she’d brought him here. He felt a pang of real panic.

“So, ah… what happens now?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

As she’d done in his dream, Curnen leaped onto him. Her arms and legs wrapped around him, and he sat down heavily under her impact. She pressed her lips against his, and it took all his strength to push her away. He held her by the shoulders, and felt bones and wiry muscle beneath the dress. He wiped her excess spittle from his face and said, “Whoa, no, wait a minute, hold on.”

Her big eyes looked hurt.

“Just—look, can we talk first? Can you talk?”

She looked down and shook her head.

“But you can understand me, right?”

Again she shook her head. Then she laughed, giddy and simian-like. Was she joking, or just insane?

She felt amazingly strong and solid in his arms, and as she wriggled on his lap, he tried to banish his unexpected physical response. “Okay, look, I think you’re very, ah… interesting, but this really isn’t the best way to get a guy to like you.” He brushed some hair out of her face. Her big eyes seemed even larger as the moonlight glinted off them. “And anyway, you don’t know anything about me.”

She touched his chest over his heart, then mimed breaking a stick. Then she put her palm over her own heart.

Rob choked on unexpected emotion. “Well, I can’t argue with that,” he said, his voice ragged.

This girl was as beautiful as her sister, although in a wild way he’d never experienced. And she definitely aroused him. He hadn’t been with anyone since Anna, and now all those denied feelings surged to the surface. His hand shook as he cupped her cheek. “Have you ever really kissed anyone before?”

She ignored the question, nuzzling into his hand. The moonlight shone off her full, moist lips.

The desire had grown too strong to resist. “Okay, just trust me,” he said as he leaned up and kissed her again, with just his lips. She tasted of wild berries, and her breath smelled of fresh apples. When he pulled away, she whimpered very softly.

A tiny rational voice in his mind screamed variations of What the hell are you doing? but he was too entranced to acknowledge it. “Did you like that?” he said, moving his hands to her waist.

She nodded.

“Sometimes when people who really like each other kiss, they touch their tongues together.” It was like explaining something to a child, which was totally at odds with the urgency he felt in his body. “Do you think you might like that?”

She nodded again.

“Okay. Now close your eyes, relax, and do what I do.”

With her eyes closed, her body trembling, she looked impossibly young. But he’d passed the point of resisting his own impulses, and was motivated by both raging lust and overwhelming tenderness as he put his hand on the back of her head, drew her down, and touched his lips to hers. Their mouths opened and she tentatively met his tongue with her own.

Her hands brushed his face with light, fluttering fingertips, careful around his swollen cheek and eyelid. She shivered all over, making faint delicious sighs, and he let his hands move up her slender torso until his thumbs felt the swell of her breasts beneath the old, worn dress. When he stroked her lightly, she moaned into his mouth.

Her kisses turned into little nibbles that covered his chin and cheeks before returning to engulf his mouth. He let her dictate the pace, enjoying the way she delighted in each sensation. When she finally stopped and looked into his eyes, the simplicity of the tenderness he saw in them almost brought him to tears. He’d forgotten that look, and the feelings it inspired. “Hey,” he said hoarsely, not wanting to cry, “maybe we should slow down a li—”

She jumped to her feet and pulled the dress off over her head. Beneath it, she was naked. She tossed it aside and then fell on him again. Straddling his body, she kissed him hard and urgently. His hands slid to her back, down to her hips, then up to her breasts. Her body felt more voluptuous than it had moments earlier; were her breasts now somehow larger? He took off his own shirt, holding her soft, warm, slippery skin against him, feeling her nipples slide deliciously over his chest.

Finally it was too intense for him, and he reached for the clasp of his jeans.

“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered. “Other people may have, but I won’t.”

A tear dropped silently from her eye to his cheek.

“That’s not really her, you know,” a voice said from behind them.